Sensory play with baking soda and vinegar

It has rained a lot here lately, and on one of those grey days Emma asked if she could play with vinegar and baking soda. Actually, she said vinegar and flour, but she mean baking soda (she wanted to see the fizz effect of mixing an acid and base). She was pretty excited to show Lily how it works, and all three kids enjoyed this sensory play experience!

Johnny was very methodical, starting off with little bits, and then pouring the entire cup of vinegar on, and admiring the fizz!

I’m not sure why he pulled his arm out of his sleeve and through the top of his shirt…

The girls saw Johnny pour out his entire cup, and decided to follow suit! They noticed that, when baking soda and vinegar mix together, putting your hands in the solution makes them feel kind of slippery!

Cost-benefit analysis:

Prep: Getting out vinegar, baking soda, and trays – less than one minute

Initial entertainment: about 10 minutes

Clean-up: 2 minutes or less. Since we put a thin layer of baking soda on the trays and there is only a little vinegar in a cup, this is not a very messy experiment with my kids. Even if it gets on the floor, both vinegar and baking soda are cleaning agents, and so very easy to clean up!

Cost: Less than $2

Lasting value: experiential learning about (safe!) household chemicals, and the reaction between acids and bases

I did this with a book club group I run and it was a super big success! I like how you did it in a tray. We did ours in paper cups and added food coloring…we were sort of replicating volcano’s (dinosaur unit). However, for my preschool I think in the trays is a much better idea! Thanks for sharing :]
Lisa

As long as they aren’t stuffing huge quantities into their mouth (which they probably wouldn’t do since it doesn’t taste very good), it’s safe for pretty much any age. But baking soda and vinegar are safe to eat (although neither is recommended in large quantities), and when combined they produce sodium acetate, which you find in various foods (cheese in particular) as an ingredient.

I was going crazy stuck in the house on a rainy day with my niece and nephew (4 and 2) so we tried this and they had an absolute blast! They were cracking up every time it fixed! So fun and mess free! Perfect for rainy days!